The Institute of Plant Nutrition was built in 1922/23 with financial support from the German government. It was the workplace and home of Margarethe von Wrangell (1877-1933), who was appointed as Germany’s first female full professor on 1 January 1923.
The building first housed laboratory, institute, and living space. A first, temporary lecture hall was set up in 1929 to save Prof. von Wrangell the trip to the other lecture halls, which were farther away. The Institute’s garden served as an experimental field for groundbreaking experiments in the area of Agricultural Chemistry.
On the memorial stone erected in 1934, the scientist’s motto was preserved:
“I lived with the plants.
I put my ear to the ground
and it seemed as if the
plants were glad to be able
to tell something about the secrets of growth.”
Continuing this work, today the Institute also looks into the acquisition and absorption of mineral nutrients by plants from the soil, the importance of various symbioses for plants’ nutrition, the environmental problems of fertilization, and the influence of plant nutrition on growth and yield.
Print version of the complete historical tour (German)
Print version of Stop 26 (German)
Flyer Historical Tour (English)
